Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Haroun's father is a great storyteller. His magical stories bring laughter to the sad city of Alifbay. But one day something goes wrong and his father runs out of stories to tell. Haroun is determined to return the storyteller's gift to his father. So he flies off on the back of the Hoopie bird to the Sea of Stories - and an adventure begins.

From the critics

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At 50, I'm still a child. I flowed through this book, adventure, with ease of spirit. Mr. Rushdie provided a respite from many a book of the norm in language. I found it playful and mindful. I'll read it again some time down the stream.
The wordplay brings me back to Norton Juster's 1961 "The Phantom Tollbooth", technically a "childrens" book, phooey!.
Let us not lose our exploration, discovery, excitement, open-mindedness, and playfulness.
I give Mr. Rushdie the stars, all of them on this book.
Sincerely,
Ragnar

This children's adventure novel chronicles a young boy's journey to an alien world on which he finds the literal 'sea of stories' that provides Earth's storytellers with the raw material for their craft. The boy must help the strange creatures who protect the sea defeat the dark forces that seek to usher in a new reign of silence. Unique, magical, filled with creative wordplay—a true testament to freedom of speech.

iratom22
Oct 28, 2011

The book is a little confusing and hard to read but, I might be subjective because I had to read it in grade 9 and found it to be a little too childish.

green_thumb
Jul 18, 2011

This is an imaginative and poetic children's novel that touches on important issues in an abstract and magical way.

Quotes

Haroun...looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity... these were the Streams of Story... each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the Universe...